Blood in Stool

I have 3 cats, siblings, 9 months old. I've had them since they were 2 weeks old (abandoned). A few days ago, one of the girls presented wth loose, soupy stool with streaks of blood. I took her to the very 2 days later. The vet did a stool check in office which showed nothing, and has also sent a specimens to the lab, which I am waiting for the results. After about 3 days the stool has firmed back up and I haven't seen any blood. She has long hair and had just had her first hair all which she eliminated easily, the day the bloody stool showed up. We assumed she may have been slightly constipated from hair and that's what caused the issue.

However, her brother presented with normal, firm stool streaked with blood tonight! He is short hair, no hairball issues.

Both are 100% active, eating, drinking, playing as normal. No sign of distress or discomfort at all.

I changed their food back before Christmas to Natures Variety Instinct Raw Boost duck and Tuekey Meal formula dry. They also receive a last variety of canned foods, such as Weruva, Tiki Cat, Simply Nourish, ect. Anything that looks like real "people" food. I do not like feeding them the dry, but the male is addicted and I'm doing my best to switch them to all wet. They even get raw, which is my goal to have them on entirely.

Could this be a food issue? Of course I'll be calling the vet first thing in the morning with this new issue, just hoping for some help until then!

Also, they are all on Revolution every month. There are no plants inside they could have gotten into and eaten, and they are strictly indoor cats.

There are really just a few things that will cause blood in stool.

Food, parasites, worms.

The blood is the body's way of saying it has an inflammed bowel/intestinal tract, something is irritating them.

Because you are feeding them well, I tend to think they might need to be treated for coccidia, even when the stool came back clean.

The cysts do not shed all the time, so they can't be found sometimes, this is fairly common too.

What's great about my vet is he knows that having a cat rescue group I can't be playing guesswork and he will go ahead and treat for parasites even though it came up negative.

Why not ask the vet for ponazuril, standard is albon but it takes much longer and only inhibits new growth while the cat's system can get it under control, where as ponazuril actually kills the cysts, gone.

Fast too, once a day for up to 7 days, albon takes weeks, even months.

That or get them transitioned to a single protein limited ingredient diet like Blue Buffalo Basics turkey, or Nature's Variety Instinct limited ingredient turkey. You should see a def. diff within a couple weeks if diet is the cause.

catwoman707 said:

There are really just a few things that will cause blood in stool.
Food, parasites, worms.

The blood is the body's way of saying it has an inflammed bowel/intestinal tract, something is irritating them.

Because you are feeding them well, I tend to think they might need to be treated for coccidia, even when the stool came back clean.

The cysts do not shed all the time, so they can't be found sometimes, this is fairly common too.

What's great about my vet is he knows that having a cat rescue group I can't be playing guesswork and he will go ahead and treat for parasites even though it came up negative.

Why not ask the vet for ponazuril, standard is albon but it takes much longer and only inhibits new growth while the cat's system can get it under control, where as ponazuril actually kills the cysts, gone.
Fast too, once a day for up to 7 days, albon takes weeks, even months.

That or get them transitioned to a single protein limited ingredient diet like Blue Buffalo Basics turkey, or Nature's Variety Instinct limited ingredient turkey. You should see a def. diff within a couple weeks if diet is the cause.

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Thank you so much for your reply! I had a second opinion from a vet that is a friend and he mentioned the Albon as a just in case. I'm very familiar with both Albon and Ponazuril as I have used both in reptiles. Since all the tests have come back as negative, the first vet placed them on Flagyl. I have switched now to the Instinct Limited Ingredient in both canned and dry to see if that helps. My vet friend thought I was giving way to much variety even though he says variety is good. IF it is coccidia, everything has to be cleaned. Since we do not know what is causing this, I've tossed their litter bins for new ones. Whether that makes any difference or not, I don't know.

I went through this right after Thanksgiving.  I have 4 cats and three are 19 month old siblings. They are indoor only also. My vet ran all the stool studies including Giardia.  They were all negative. My cats had blood drawn and the test were all normal.  No temps. I cleaned everything because I was sure it was something viral between them.  She asked if there was any stress, new animals in the house and there was not. She asked if we changed their diet and we had not. She gave them a probotic paste to take twice a day. We had one that was had nausea and vomiting so she got Pepcid and an AntiNausea. My husband and I went through all our receipts for food. We also feed a variety of canned with dry.  After looking though our receipts we realized that the bag of food we bought was a day before everything started with them.  I went to PetSmart that night and got a new bag same brand different protein dry food.  The diarrhea/blood stopped within two days.  The only thing we could conclude was that we had a batch of food that was contaminated with something.

KittyMomma1122 said:

I went through this right after Thanksgiving.  I have 4 cats and three are 19 month old siblings. They are indoor only also. My vet ran all the stool studies including Giardia.  They were all negative. My cats had blood drawn and the test were all normal.  No temps. I cleaned everything because I was sure it was something viral between them.  She asked if there was any stress, new animals in the house and there was not. She asked if we changed their diet and we had not. She gave them a probotic paste to take twice a day. We had one that was had nausea and vomiting so she got Pepcid and an AntiNausea. My husband and I went through all our receipts for food. We also feed a variety of canned with dry.  After looking though our receipts we realized that the bag of food we bought was a day before everything started with them.  I went to PetSmart that night and got a new bag same brand different protein dry food.  The diarrhea/blood stopped within two days.  The only thing we could conclude was that we had a batch of food that was contaminated with something.

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Thank you for your reply! I bought a brand new bag and cans (they had run out) the day AFTER the first cat showed the symptoms! If it had been the same day, I'd feel certain that was the problem. I hate not being sure what caused this. The vet is thinking a virus they are sharing. That's fine, but I'd like to know where they got it from! I am now adding Forti-Flora to their food as suggested by both vets.